The Best Board Games in 2019

- Mar 26, 2019-

The best board games have a lot in common with PC gaming. Whether it’s the pen-and-paper RPGs that inspired Elder Scrolls or XCOM leading to the creation of a tabletop equivalent, they share much of the same DNA. We’ve gathered our favorites here, and these are perfect for playing with friends, family, or alone.

Our recommendations pull from a variety of genres, but they all feature mechanics we think PC gamers in particular will love. Some of the best board games revolve around replayability as well, so don’t worry about our suggestions being one-hit wonders.

Because many of them have modular board tiles and a host of scenarios, they offer different experiences each time and should keep you going for months. We’ve been playing Betrayal at House on the Hill for ages and still haven’t seen every possible objective, for example.

Some customers said that“Of all the games we’ve played recently, Betrayal at House on the Hill is the one we keep coming back to. ”Players take on one of many horror tropes before exploring an eerie mansion room by randomly-selected room. This means you’ll rarely get the same layout twice. That sense of uncertainty is also true of your objectives; Betrayal features 50 varied scenarios to play through.

The way these are selected is brilliantly organic. As you pick your way through abandoned ballrooms and libraries, you’ll uncover events, items, and ‘Omens’ that will eventually lead to staggeringly varied scenarios (known here as ‘Haunts’).

The mission you get given will be then decided by how many Omens are in play and where you found them, so you never really know what’s coming next. That’s where the game truly begins; you may be fighting to escape the “house as it floods, or perhaps a traitor walks among you. Both sets (survivors and traitors) then have their own secret rules to follow. This results in a tense race to the finish as you work to undermine each other and, hopefully, survive.